The Arts in Music City

Nashville’s love for the creative and performing arts can be seen,
heard, and experienced all around Music City. From the fresh and
innovative exhibits on display in the galleries that make up 5th Avenue
of the Arts to the evocative performances by the Nashville ballet, there
is no shortage of creativity found in Nashville’s art community.

Blair School of Music

blair.vanderbilt.edu/
Blair School of Music serves as the focal
point within Vanderbilt University for the
study of music as a human endeavor and as
a performing art, addressing music through
a broad array of academic, pedagogical, and
performing activities. The Blair School
maintains and promotes the highest
standards in the pursuit of scholarly and
creative work, in the delivery of instruction
and in the promotion of professional and
public service.

Nashville Jazz Workshop

nashvillejazz.org
Founded in 1998 with a focus on jazz
education, the Nashville Jazz Workshop
hosts twice-monthly performances to its
offerings; “Snap on 2&4” (on the second
and fourth Fridays of each month) as well
as other performances throughout the year.
The performances take place at the Jazz
Workshop, located in the Neuhoff Complex
at the end of Monroe Street in East
Germantown. The venue has been known
to feature nationally-recognized jazz artists as
well as top local musicians. With seating for
only 100, an unforgettable jazz experience is
guaranteed.

Nashville Opera Association

nashvilleopera.org
The Nashville Opera Association
offers four fully-staged opera productions at
their 26,000-square-foot Noah Liff Opera
Center. Additionally, the Nashville Opera,
who seeks to be accessible to the entire
community, performs at various locations throughout their season as part of their On
Tour educational outreach program.

Nashville Symphony

nashvillesymphony.org
The spectacular $123-million
Schermerhorn Symphony Center boasts 1,872 seats on three levels and
features 30 soundproof windows, making it
one of the few major concert halls in North
America with natural light. The lovely
facility also houses an enclosed garden, a gift
shop with music-themed items, and a bistro-style
cafe.
The Schemerhorn is home to the
GRAMMY® Award-winning Nashville
Symphony which has earned an
international reputation for its innovative
programming and its commitment to
performing, recording, and commissioning
works by America’s leading composers.
With more than 140 performances annually,
the 85-member orchestra offers a broad
range of classical, pops, jazz, and children’s
concerts, while its extensive education and
community engagement programs inspire
over 100,000 children and adults each year.

Tennessee Performing Arts Center

tpac.org
The performance venues at TPAC
are Andrew Jackson Hall (2,472 seats),
James K. Polk Theater (1,075), Andrew
Johnson Theater (256), and War Memorial
Auditorium (1,661), the historic landmark
located across 6th Avenue and the
plaza from the Center. Among its many
operations, TPAC presents a series of
Broadway shows and special engagements,
and administers a comprehensive education
program.
TPAC is also home to two resident
performing arts organizations: Nashville
Ballet and Nashville Repertory Theatre.
Presenting their work on the stages of
TPAC, these organizations are independent
of the center.

Performing Arts

The performing arts offer some of the best, and perhaps most unexpected,
entertainment you’ll find in Music City. Taking center stage at venues all over
the city, the performance arts offers something for everyone from a children’s
marionette show, a comedy, or an inspiring classical play.

ACT 1

act1online.com
ACT 1, Artists’ Cooperative Theatre,
is an organization dedicated to bringing
theatrical gems, both classical and modern,
to Nashville audiences. ACT 1 has
presented productions of more than 100 of
the world’s greatest plays.

Actors Bridge Ensemble

actorsbridge.org
Actors Bridge is a training program
for new and seasoned actors dedicated to
progressive and provocative productions. A
group of artists committed to the ensemble’s
principle, the Actors Bridge is an incubator
for new theatrical works.

Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre

dinnertheatre.com
Chaffin’s Barn was Nashville’s first
professional theatre. Guests can enjoy
dinner while watching professional
Broadway-style plays, comedies, and musicals
in the MainStage theatre.

Circle Players

circleplayers.net
Circle Players is the oldest non-profit
volunteer arts association in Nashville, and
it specializes in presenting and performing
musicals and comedies.

GroundWorks Theatre

Marionette Shows at the Nashville Public Library

nashvillepubliclibrary.org/wishingchair
Held throughout the year, marionette
productions represent the best of Tom
Tichenor’s marionettes and his legacy as
a puppeteer at the library for 50 years.
They acquired marionettes from Chicago’s
Peeko Puppet Productions, as well as new
productions developed by the library’s
talented children’s staff.

Miss Jeanne’s Mystery Dinner Theatre

missjeannes.com
Solve a musical-comedic mystery while
enjoying a gourmet dinner. Work together
with other dinner guests to decipher clues,
bribe suspects, and make a guess as to
“whodunit.” There are prizes for the winners.

Nashville Ballet

nashvilleballet.com
Founded in 1981 as a civic dance
company and established as a professional
company in 1986, Nashville Ballet has
flourished as the only professional ballet
company in Middle Tennessee. The
Nashville Ballet presents a varied repertoire
of classical ballet and contemporary
works, while its outreach and community
engagement programs are offered
throughout the year to schools, businesses,
and community groups.

Nashville Children’s Theatre

nashvillechildrenstheatre.org
Ranked by TIME magazine as one
of the top five children’s theatres in the
country, the Nashville Children’s Theatre
is the oldest professional, non-profit theatre
dedicated exclusively to kids and families
in the country. NCT enjoys producing
quality performances in its state-of-the-art
theatre. NCT also offers camps and classes
throughout the year for children of different
ages.

Nashville Repertory Theatre

nashvillerep.org
The Rep is Tennessee’s largest
professional theatre company. The Rep
performs five main-stage and three off-
Broadway productions annually in theatres
at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

Museums and Art Galleries in Music City

The recent growth of the fine arts scene in Nashville is adding greatly to
the city’s creative culture and offering another way for Music City’s heritage to
be told.

Aaron Douglas Gallery at Fisk University

fisk.edu/services-resources/fisk-university-galleries/the-aaron-douglas-gallery
Founded in 1866, Fisk University
was one of the first private educational
institutions offering a secondary liberal
arts curriculum to freed slaves. During the
mid-1900s, the school determined that
aesthetic development was an important
part of the education process, and painter/
illustrator Aaron Douglas commissioned
the Fisk Murals for the new library in 1930.
Douglas later established Fisk’s first formal
art department where he served as chairman
for over 30 years.
The Aaron Douglas Gallery, a free
museum, has become a venue of changing
exhibitions highlighting artworks from the
University’s permanent collection, as well
as temporary exhibitions of artworks loaned
by organizations in the art, education, civic,
and business areas. The collection contains
pre-modern, modern and contemporary
paintings, sculptures, photographs, textiles,
and prints from a variety of cultures and
by many mid-career, established and world-renowned
artists.

Artober

artobernashville.com
Artober Nashville is a month-long
celebration of arts and culture in Nashville,
designed to inform and inspire the
community’s awareness of and participation
in the array of activities during the month
of October. Artober Nashville is one of the
single largest celebrations of the arts and
culture in the South and includes hundreds
of events in visual, performing arts, music,
craft, film, and more.

Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art

cheekwood.org
Just eight miles southwest of downtown
Nashville stands Cheekwood Botanical
Garden & Museum of Art. Cresting the
hillside of this 55-acre property is a 1932
mansion where Cheekwood’s permanent
art collection is housed. Located in the
30,000-square-foot Georgian-style home
are world-class collections of American
contemporary painting and sculpture,
English and American decorative arts, and
renowned traveling exhibitions. Collections
also include silver and 350 pieces of the
most comprehensive Worcester porcelain
collection in America. Cheekwood’s
American art collection includes 600
paintings and 5,000 prints, drawings, and
photographs.
The Contemporary Art collection,
housed in the galleries created out of
the estate’s original garage and stables,
includes paintings by Larry Rivers, Andy
Warhol, Robert Ryman, and Red Grooms.
Additionally, seven small galleries were
created in the old horse stable stalls to
enable the Museum to display installation
art (rarely exhibited in the Southeast).
Cheekwood’s Temporary Contemporary
was initiated in 1996 and consists of four
solo exhibitions each year. Each show
features innovative, influential, and thought-provoking
works by artists in the TC gallery.

Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum

countrymusichalloffame.org
The Country Music Hall of Fame® and
Museum recently unveiled a $100-million
expansion in 2013, doubling its size to
350,000 square feet of dynamic state-of-the-art
galleries, archival storage, education
classrooms, retail stores, and special
event space boasting stunning downtown
views. The ambitious 210,000-square-foot
expansion, completed in April 2014,
includes the 800-seat CMA Theater; the
Taylor Swift Education Center— featuring
three classrooms and an interactive, hands-on
immersion into contemporary country
music with the ACM Gallery and the Fred
and Dinah Gretsch Family Gallery; the
legendary letterpress operation of Hatch
Show Print (expanded and relocated inside
the museum); and multi-purpose event
rental spaces already in high demand.
Accredited by the American Alliance
of Museums and called the “Smithsonian
of country music” because of its unrivaled
collection, the museum adds a strikingly
modern touch to the Nashville skyline. It is
situated at the epicenter of the city’s rapidly
growing core, a block from the popular
honky tonks of Broadway, across the street
from Bridgestone Arena and Music City
Center, and adjacent to the Omni Hotel.

Downtown Art Galleries and Fifth Avenue of the Arts

Downtown Nashville offers more than 15
unique art galleries including those located
in the eclectic Arcade and expanding
5th Avenue of the Arts art district. These
galleries seek to offer ongoing visual arts
experiences distinctive for Nashvillians and
visitors through a variety of exhibitions that
change monthly. These galleries include
The Arts Company, The Rymer Gallery,
Tinney Contemporary, Blend Studio,
Coop Gallery, and more.

First Saturday Art Crawl

Hosted by the Fifth Avenue of the Arts,
First Saturday Art Crawl takes place on the
first Saturday of each month when multiple
downtown galleries open their doors to avid
art lovers for a night of art enjoyment.

Frist Center for the Visual Arts

fristcenter.org
Located in downtown Nashville, the
Frist Center for the Visual Arts is the city’s
largest art exhibition center. The Frist
has no permanent collection, but instead
specializes in exhibiting premier collections
on loan from other galleries around the
world. Many of the exhibits on display are
compiled exclusively for the Frist Center
and cannot be seen anywhere else. Located
in Nashville’s former historic main post
office, this city landmark was placed on the
National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

Hatch Show Print Haley Gallery

hatchshowprint.com
Owned and operated by the Country
Music Hall of Fame® and Museum, Hatch
Show Print has been in business since 1879
and is one of the nation’s oldest working
letterpress poster shops. Hatch has created
original art for circuses, Grand Ole Opry
stars, concerts, and sporting events, and
continues to produce restrikes of classic
Hatch posters in addition to creating
new work enjoyed by music fans, graphic
designers, and art critics worldwide. The
Haley Gallery showcases the historic
restrikes of original posters from the Hatch
collection, as well as Master Printer Jim
Sherraden’s monoprints.

Haynes Galleries

haynesgalleries.com
Unique in many ways, Haynes Galleries
is the result of Mr. Haynes’s passion for and
commitment to the connoisseurship and
appreciation of fine art. Haynes Galleries
is pleased to offer a distinguished list of
American artists from three centuries –
works by important 19th Century artists
such as John Singer Sargent and William
McGregor Paxton, as well as 20th and 21st
Century masters including Yousuf Karsh,
Stephen Scott Young, David Brega, and the
legendary Wyeth family.

LeQuire Gallery & Studio

lequiregallery.com
The gallery features contemporary
paintings, drawings, and sculpture
with an emphasis on figurative
work. Exhibits change quarterly
with work from Alan LeQuire –
the nationally recognized sculptor
of Musica and Athena Parthenos
– always on view.

OZ Nashville

oznashville.com
OZ is a destination for
innovative, contemporary
art experiences. Housed in a
newly-renovated former cigar
warehouse, OZ’s modern, flexible
performance and installation
space enables leading artists from
multiple disciplines to present
brave new art in a non-traditional
context. OZ offers a diverse
program of performing and visual
art events and inspires curious
audiences of all ages.

The Parthenon

parthenon.org
The Parthenon, the world’s only exact
replica of the ancient Greek temple, resides
only two miles from downtown Nashville.
Inside the temple stands the 42-foot-tall
gilded goddess of wisdom, Athena, the
western hemisphere’s largest indoor statue.
Housed in the downstairs gallery is the
city’s permanent art collection. Known
as The Cowan Collection, it spans the
years 1765-1923. This 63-piece collection
emphasizes landscapes and seascapes with
techniques ranging from the smooth,
almost non-brushstroke of the Neo-classic
to the impasto and laded brushwork of
Impressionism. All of the artists in this
collection were American, and many were
members of the National Academy.

Sarratt Gallery at Vanderbilt University

vanderbilt.edu/sarrattgallery
The Sarratt Gallery, a free gallery,
showcases artists from all over the country,
as well as from students and faculty at
Vanderbilt. Located in the main lobby of
the Sarratt Student Center at Vanderbilt
University, shows change each month and
include the popular Holiday Arts Festival,
which features contemporary crafts by
Tennessee artists.

Tennessee State Museum

tnmuseum.org
Free to the public, the Tennessee State
Museum is one of the largest state museums
in the nation with more than 60,000
square feet of permanent exhibits and a
10,000-square-foot changing exhibition hall.
The museum’s interpretive exhibits span
15,000 years of Tennessee’s history during
the Prehistoric, Frontier, Age of Jackson,
Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction
periods. These sections include special
displays of furniture, silver, weapons, quilts,
and paintings produced by Tennesseans.
The Tennessee State Museum’s Civil
War holdings of uniforms, battle flags and
weapons are among the country’s finest. The
museum also has many one-of-a-kind items
associated with such famous Americans as
Andrew Jackson, Daniel Boone, James K.
Polk, Andrew Johnson, David Crockett,
Sam Houston, Alvin C. York, and Cordell
Hull.

Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery

vanderbilt.edu/gallery
The Vanderbilt
University Fine
Arts Gallery, a free
museum, features a
series of engaging
exhibitions each year
that represent the
diversity of artistic
production today, as
well as throughout
the history of
Eastern and Western
art. In addition to
exhibitions drawn
from the permanent
collection and
organized from public and private sources,
a number of traveling exhibitions are
presented as well.
The University’s permanent collection,
totaling more than 5,500 works, serves to
illustrate the history of world art in its most
creative and comprehensive aspects. This
historical art collection is the only one of
its kind in the area, serving the needs of
students and the community at large. The
collection has grown to include strong works
in East Asian art, European Old Master
paintings, paintings from the Barbizon
school, and African, Oceanic, and Pre-
Columbian art and artifacts.
The gallery’s most recent addition to
their permanent collection was a donation
of approximately 150 original Andy Warhol
photographs and prints. This collection
helps to strengthen the Gallery’s growing
collection of 20th century art.

Zeitgeist Gallery

zeitgeist-art.comFounded in 1994, Zeitgeist is a beacon of
art in the Nashville community. Started by
owner Janice Zeitlin in Cummins Station it
has served as a cultivation ground for new
artists and a safe place for established artists
to experiment and grow. Under the direction
of Lain York, Zeitgeist maintains a firm place
in the Nashville art scene today. Bridging
the gap between collectors and creators,
Zeitgeist provides a venue for world class
shows in the south.